I/O Avenue Taking Applications

If you’re looking for a career change, the Tallahassee area is in desperate need of people who are expert in computers and coding. A special program to train those skills is now recruiting class members.

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I/O Avenue's Ryan Kopinsky posing with photos of the initial program class.

Credit Tom Flanigan

Ryan Kopinsky is the director of the program, which is called “I/O Avenue”. He said it began a year ago as a joint effort involving the Mayor’s Office, Florida A&M University and DOMI Station.

“They realized there was a gap at training technical talent that was in demand by both the state and private industry here in Tallahassee. They also realized that not everybody in our community had access.”

Kopinsky said the need for people with this kind of training was made shockingly clear in a Tallahassee jobs study done by the career-networking site Linkedin.

“Over 500 jobs were not fulfilled for a period of six months or longer and these were jobs in a tech area.”

So the jobs are there. Kopinsky explained the I/O Avenue training consists of two tracks.

“We have an introductory ‘on-ramp’ program, which really teaches the fundamentals of what it means to be a software engineer and goes over the fundamentals of computing, how a computer is built, and how it’s best used. Then our more advanced ‘highway’ program teaches software development using web applications, so they learn how to build web applications from scratch.”

But Kopinsky warned class space – and the time to apply – are both limited.

“The programs, both on-ramp and the highway programs, start February 5th and so they have about 2-3 weeks to apply. We interview every candidate for about 5-10 minutes. It’s just a short interview to get to know them and they can questions and we can ask them questions. But I’d encourage everyone to apply on: www.ioavenue.com.”

Because, as Kopinsky reiterated, there are a lot of rewarding, creative jobs out there right now that are going unfilled.